Posted
by
kdawson
on Monday December 04, 2006 @04:29PM
from the linus-is-ok-though dept.

lisah writes "Big changes are afoot at Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) with today's surprise announcement of the departure of CEO Stuart Cohen and the layoff of nine other employees. Details are still emerging about what exactly this means for OSDL but according to a preliminary announcement, Cohen is 'leaving to pursue other open source opportunities' and OSDL is 'refocusing the scope of [their] work to better align resources with [their] revenues...'" The article also mentions the last year's layoff at OSDL.

"non-profit" doesn't mean that don't have to make net income. All going concerns must make a profit. Even the most charitable of non-profits will require an annual net operating income of 3-4 percent at a minimum. Otherwise, small fluctuations in revenue result in layoffs (the employees are not themselves non-profit). The issue is whether that profit benefits owners (i.e. shareholders) or the public (by growing the concern and furthering its purpose).

Yeah, really. I haven't figured out what the deal is with the yearly rash of large-scale layoffs from various companies in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I *really* love the ones where a plant closes with no notice on the day before Thanksgiving, with a whopping 2 weeks severance for people who've worked their entire lives there but were e.g. contractors so had no pension.Obviuosly Scrooge owns a lot more companies than anyone realized. I really should start making a formal blacklist of co

Companies like GM and Ford saw the writing on the wall for the last 20+ years about cars being more practical than luxurious. If they didn't market and advertise contrary to those notions the general public wouldn't be so adverse to the notion of a practical car. Now you have more and more people wanting practical cars and they can't sell the monstrocities fast enough.Judging by the number of kia, toyota, honda, and the like I see on the road, practical is in. It's also interesting to note that these "im

In short, they were greedy and milked the "big bulky muscle SUV" style car too long. Now they have to redesign, retool, remarket, and win over their loyal customers with designs that are completely unlike what they had before.

And, you know, it's not like they couldn't foresee this. They hit the same wall during the first oil shock in the mid-seventies and the writing has been on the wall for at least the past five years. But, as usual here in the US, they looked at the profit margin on SUVs and other big

Just a heads up, there are "imports" which are made in the USA and Canada.

I personally have no problem buying or driving a non-traditionally american car. Provided it's safe, fuel efficient and gets me where I'm going I don't care who made it. Granted "fuel efficient" is a subjective scale. 40MPG is nice, for instance, but it's probably not the best our level of technology can afford us.

But I'd rather only get 40MPG than the current typical 25-30MPG most cars/suvs get.

So you are against companies that give consumers exactly what they want?

First, GM: it did not discontinue the EV1 because "consumers" didn't want it; on the contrary, most people who leased one begged GM to let them buy it when the lease was up. So what did GM do instead? It destroyed the cars! Maybe you ought to actually watch that movie, as the parent suggested. Then you'll realize that maybe, just maybe, GM had an ulterior motive.

Is that "giving consumers exactly what they want?"

As for Microsoft, it got to where it is now in large part to shady deals (QDOS, OS/2, etc.) and illegal business practices. Ask the average person on the street and they'll initially tell you they want Windows, but if you prod them a little you'll eventually find out that what they really want is the applications that run on Windows, and that the OS isn't that great.

Is "giving consumers what they want" the same as forcing them to take it?

And what is SCO giving "consumers" nowadays? Lawsuits? I'm not even going to bother with this one -- the notion that SCO is doing anything that "consumers" want is just too absurd.

Do "consumers" want to pay $699 worth of protection money?

Finally, as for Wal-Mart... well, Wal-Mart doesn't belong on the list. (Sony does, though, but that's another rant...)

"Ask the average person on the street and they'll initially tell you they want Windows, but if you prod them a little you'll eventually find out that what they really want is the applications that run on Windows, and that the OS isn't that great"I think they'd probably say that what they REALLY want is the applications that run on Windows and that the OS is irrelevant. I really doubt that most people have negative or positive feelings about Windows. An analogy that I think is somewhat apt is that of airline

I think they'd probably say that what they REALLY want is the applications that run on Windows and that the OS is irrelevant. I really doubt that most people have negative or positive feelings about Windows.

What people do have negative feelings about is their computer being slow, unstable, or insecure. They don't blame Windows for this only because they don't realize it's Windows' fault.

I use my XP PC 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I seldom have a crash. This idea that Windows just doesn't serve an av

"Therefore, you are most emphatically not average! You can't extrapolate your experience to the "average user."If I use my PC 300 hours a month without an intrusive crash, then the average XP install can probably expect the same. I don't do any special Voo Doo magic with my install. The last time I installed from scratch was 2 years ago. I don't do anything magic to get rid of malware: I run Microsoft OneCare like basically every other Windows Update user.

However, that doesn't mean that GM would have obviously made money from that. For example, I believe that there're laws requiring car companies to make parts available for some amount of time (maybe 10 years?) after a car is manufactured. That would mean that GM would have to maintain this stock or production just to make the EV1 leasees happy.

First of all, if there is such a law couldn't GM get around it by having the buyers sign a waiver or something? Or even sell them with salvage titles? Speaking of sa

however it could be argued that GM's destruction of those vehicles was a sound business move. Maybe they felt that the technology was decent but they as a company couldn't figure out how to effectively market and sell the machines; they would be concerned that someone else could figure it out.

We weren't discussing a list of companies that make "sound business moves," we were discussing a list of companies that are [don't really] "give consumers what they want." It's possible that you're right that it was a

The CEO who left had his head handed to him by the membership, and if they didn't actually tell him to go, staying would not have been very pleasant. Endorsing the Novell thing wasn't too smart, and they were very upset. And he's said to have promoted the GPL3 story to Forbes, which also pissed off the membership tremendously. Other than that, Oracle won't join (Wim said he feels that OSDL doesn't operate in Linux' best interest, which I think is correct), Andrew Morton walked out and went to work for Google, and OSDL can't get enough members to stay afloat financially.

Little revenue obtained making free software? The single biggest attraction of open source is that as a big corporation, you can leech the efforts of thousands of unpaid but experienced contractors and never once feel the need to give back. (e.g., Thanks Apache!) So...it isn't exactly surprising that OSDL isn't exactly raking in the dough.

The single biggest attraction of open source is that as a big corporation, you can leech the efforts of thousands of unpaid but experienced contractors and never once feel the need to give back. (e.g., Thanks Apache!)

Eh? There have been numerous times where I've grabbed some nice-free Apache software and used it for my purposes. Tomcat, xerces, xalan, jakarta, and a bunch of other things.

Apache is giving back by providing us with a huge amount of useable software that we're allowed to use to solve our own problems. Much of it has solved some of the tedious bits one would rather not have to write onesself.

How exactly is Apache leaching off developers other than being a central point where OSS developed code can be found by all? (Like that's a bad thing or something.)

(I'm specifically curious about this, I've always thought Apache was a good netizen and a place to get some useful stuff.)

What about the other multibillion dollar oil company that runs Apache and has contributed money and code to the Apache project, but hasn't contributed a cent to Linux kernel development (which the first multibillion dollar oil company happens to host a high bandwidth mirror of, and has contributed bug reports to?

...Apache isn't itself the leech. The multibillion dollar oil company that runs Apache all over the place and hasn't ever contributed a cent to the Apache project is.

Where does this monitary obligation come from? The license under which Apache is distributed under spells out the responsibilities of the user who downloads the software. If the Apache creators and maintainers wanted money, the should have spelled it out in the license.

Obligation does not need to be a legal entity. There is the whole concept of community participation.

Let's say there was a resource that was available in HUGE amounts, was free, and no one was obliged to conserve, reduce or become more efficient in use of that resource. If all of the large users of that resource continued to use this "free" resource, eventually it will begin to deplete or become of poorer quality or possibly become something where only

Relying on the inherent goodness of humans (or corporations) is naive at best. You can't come up with this super-wonderful new "business model" wherein you give everything away and then sit there and pout when people don't behave the way you idealistically expected them to.

"Relying on the inherent goodness of humans (or corporations) is naive at best."

Yet, history has shown that if the project is good enough, the inherent goodness of humans is enough. Apache, XFree/Xorg and the BSDs may not be raking in mega-millions of dollars, but they keep on keeping on year after year.

Yet, history has shown that if the project is good enough, the inherent goodness of humans is enough. Apache, XFree/Xorg and the BSDs may not be raking in mega-millions of dollars, but they keep on keeping on year after year.

History has shown no such thing. Many of the biggest contributors to those projects are paid. Either directly, like Keith Packard who was hired by SuSE and then Hpaq to work on XFree86/Xorg or indirectly like academics or users who "scratch an itch" for their employer's needs and then

I'd be interested to see some hard numbers for this. Take the amounts paid out to all contributors to a major project. Come up with some kind of estimate on the value of the contribution, even something as simple as lines of code. Now add up all the lines of code and then divide the total amount paid out by that number. You should have the average value of a line of code. It's all well and good that the big stars of a project get paid decent money, but they're paid that money because tons of others ju

Without volunteers, FreeBSD would die...and you wouldn't need Netcraft to confirm it.

The question is how many of those 'volunteers' worked on it during their 'free' time and how many worked on it as part of their regular job adapting FreeBSD to meet their needs. Remove all.edu and and then any non ISP.com addresses and you get a rough approximation of the true 'volunteers' (except for the ISP's that use FreeBSD, which is probably substantial).

Look on the bright side. If the multibillion dollar oil company uses apache, it means its business partners don't *have* to use IE7 to talk to it, and *you* don't have to either, in order to talk to them. More people use free software, so that's a good thing overall.

The promise of FOSS is that you get the source code to do what you want with it. No matter who you are. If you make changes, and distribute them (assuming the GPL), you have to distribute your code changes as well.

They (your Oil Company) are taking the code, compiling it, and using it as it was intended. That's not leaching.

The license cuts both ways. There's no requirement to pay for it. Whether your some kids in your garage, saturating your parents DSL line to upload data to youtube, or a multinational oil company saturating a bunch of OC-3 lines.

Would it be 'nice' of them to contribute back? Sure. But we can't speak ill of them for not (Though I'd be willing to bet that there are a few code patches coming from said Multinational Oil).

Apache isn't itself the leech. The multibillion dollar oil company that runs Apache all over the place and hasn't ever contributed a cent to the Apache project is.

Is it? When I worked for a multibillion pound megacorp, I used Apache extensively. It never once
crossed my mind to make a donation to the Apache project. Why should it? The thing is, a web
server is such a trivial piece of software to write. It just happened that someone else had
already done it for me, so I didn't need to write it myself. I'm

I think you misunderstood the original post. I believe the point he was making was corporations are using Apache left right and centre, but very few of them are giving anything back (bar bug reports, and probably not even much of that). They are harnessing the benefit of the developers work, and not having to pay anything for it. That's the nature of open source though. I'm not saying it's good or bad.

To quote from their website: "OSDL is a nonprofit organization that provides state-of-the-art computing and test facilities to developers around the world."So OSDL doesn't really have much of a business model other than "our members give us some money, and we use it to pay Linus Torvalds a salary".

The fact that they aren't making lots of money is therefore not a failure of a business model, but the fact that they are a non-profit, with perhaps a poorly defined mission, that as a result has difficulty attrac

The fact that they aren't making lots of money is therefore not a failure of a business model, but the fact that they are a non-profit, with perhaps a poorly defined mission, that as a result has difficulty attracting lots of sponsorship money...

Non-profits need business models too, preferably built on the strength of a brand and/or the willingness of profitable businesses to build their own brands through them. For examples, see the United Way (tie-ins w/ the NFL, etc.), the Red Cross (sells blood with markup) and the Komen Foundation (tie-ins with every homemaker product ever invented).

True, but an open source project doesn't take much to run - just a server and some bandwidth, and the bandwidth needs can be minimized via judicious mirroring.Uuuh, ok. That's like saying that all you need to run a successful business is a cash register. If these projects are run like hobbies, and you don't expect any kind of widespread useage or support, then yeah, slap it up on a web server, and be done with it. If you want it to be successful, than it needs to be run the same as any other successful

"leech" is a highly perjorative term when you're talking about software that is, in fact, distributed for free.

That said, even NPO's (non-profit organizations) have to pay salaries. If OSDL can't even do that (this is a 33% reduction in their paid staff), then it certainly seems like the business model is broken in some way, shape or form, or at very least not working the way it ought to.

Correct, but they aren't supposed to make money. To quote from their website: "OSDL is a nonprofit organization that provides state-of-the-art computing and test facilities to developers around the world."

I've never understood how this is non-profit.At the end of the financial year, there is no profit to be paid out to the owners. It all goes back into the company. Realistically, in this case, you're right... a lot of it goes to salaries. Although, you can't claim to be a "non-profit" company, and pay the CEO a kajillion dollars. Once you're a non-profit, then the IRS watches closely to make sure that people are paid reasonable amounts. You can't use it as a tax loophole (otherwise, every company on th

Sure you can. Visa and Kaiser-Permanente are both "nonprofit" organizations. Of course, you can't simply pay the CEO what would otherwise be the companies profit, instead you simply re-invest it into the company, as visa does, or buy the competition, like KP does.

Um, but who owns the stuff that company owns? If I understood you correctly, there is no owner, the company is own owner, so you cannot i.e. buy a non-profit organization... How they start at all then? Someone makes it and donates it to itself?

At the end of the financial year, there is no profit to be paid out to the owners. It all goes back into the company.

True

Realistically, in this case, you're right... a lot of it goes to salaries. Although, you can't claim to be a "non-profit" company, and pay the CEO a kajillion dollars.

False. There are no limits to the salaries than can be paid to the employees of a non-profit. (Being the CEO or Chairman of a large charity can be quite lucrative.)

Once you're a non-profit, then the IRS watches closely to make sure that people are paid reasonable amounts.

False. The IRS doesn't scrutinize the return of any single non-profit than do any single individual or business.

You can't use it as a tax loophole (otherwise, every company on the planet would be a "non-profit") company.

Partly correct - non profits are chartered, and must operate within that charter. Theu can't be chartered unless they are a (generally speaking) charitable, social (fraternal), or educational organization.

"Non-profit" just means that their institutional objective is not to maximize profits at the expense of all else. They have another objective that (theoretically) overrides the desire to make more money.

See my other reply. I thought that was so obvious it wasn't worth saying. In any case, my post was a half-jest. And my point about it being a non-profit was really in response to all those whining about how Open Source companies have no business model - a non-profit doesn't generally have a profit-driven business model, they usually have some non-profit-driven goals and seek funding through any number of means (grants, donations or business activities) to further those goals.And clearly if uses of funds

Yes, I realize that. The "not supposed to make money" thing was partially in jest, I didn't realize how seriously everybody would take it. My point was that a non-profit generally has a set of non profit-oriented goals and engage in a variety of means to raise funds to support expenses incurred in reaching that goal.

You took my post too seriously and apparently missed the obvious tongue-in-cheekiness of it. I realize that a non-profit still has to cover their costs, whether through grants, donations, or business revenues - I didn't think this should need to be explained explicitly, but your suggestion that I said something "wrong" is laughable and makes you look like an idiot.The point is that people in this thread kept harping about Open Source business models. A non-profit organization doesn't have a profit-driven

Some businessmen were born to "employ people", others to "utilize human resources". There are far too many of the latter; but we can't blame them totally. The other side of the equation is the worker who doesn't like the fact that he "works for them" and actually feels better being a "team member". Then there is the investor who probably doesn't buy companies that are "laying people off", but might be more interested in purchasing the stock of a company that is "engaging in refocusing the business and re

Speaking of which, what the hell is "I'm looking forward to forming a venture to explore open source joint development using best practices in collaboration and building communities." I'm certain that this somehow involves getting very drunk in the near term, but I'll be damned if I know how.

I'm betting it says something about 'right-tasking', 'examining organisational structure' and identifying roles and the people best suited to them."
"Yeah, sort of."
"Then yes, they want to get rid of someone."

"refocusing the scope of [their] work to better align resources with [their] revenues...'" : we've just realised that for all that we do, very little actually brings money in. This is a problem. So if it doesn't bring money in, it's either canned or changed such that it does.

Not particularly nice if you work for OSDL, but it happens in business from time to time...

Sadly yes. Word is they're tapping Theo DeRaadt to take over kernel development, but this will be a part time, unpaid, position. Overall management of the direction of Linux will be given to Avie Tevanian, late of Mac OS X fame.

Also Alan Cox has announced he's leaving voluntarily to persue other interests. No replacement has been announced, though apparently Eric Raymond, Hans Reiser, and Kevin Warwick are being named as possible successors.

OSDL is 'funded' by a collection of corporations. As far as I know they don't actually sell anything. So, either their funding was cut, or they have mismanaged themselves into a deficit. Which is it? Anyone actually know? I suppose their recent IP projects have led to high legal costs, but I'll bet someone reading/. knows the truth.

At least the CEO also leaves. Something went wrong...and they didn't put all the blame on some low workers who had nothing to do with the decision making, while the higher ranks were unaffected. I don't know if the CEO left voluntarily, but if he did, I commend him for that.

Personally, I'm wondering if Cohen's departure has anything to do with his position on the Novell/Microsoft deal [novell.com]? (look at the section labeled "Good for the Open Source Community")

While I enjoy imaginations of Linus giving Stuart Cohen the metaphorical/physical boot, I think the realistic interpretation of "leaving to pursue other open source opportunities" means "huge bed of cash to land on from Novell/Microsoft deal". After all, work with Novell is still considered "open source" in letter if not spirit.

I'd like to take this opportunity, after countless Slashdot posts about "Everybody should know how computers work", that perhaps what would be more useful if everybody instead learned a bit about how business works. I think that the OSS community has pooh-poohed the importance of basic business knowledge long enough, as is obvious from the overwhelming non-success of OSS companies.

While you may have a point, it doesn't really apply in the case of OSDL. OSDL isn't a business in the sense of cost vs. revenue. It is a non-profit organization, funded by sponsors. So, unless the sponsors cut funding and/or OSDL mismanaged itself into a hole, this shouldn't be happening. The sponsors supply a budget and, assuming you have the ability to forecast costs with at least some competence, there should be no dramatic shortfalls.I'm confident the sponsors haven't cut funding or it would have be

I'd like to take this opportunity, after countless Slashdot posts about "Everybody should know how computers work", that perhaps what would be more useful if everybody instead learned a bit about how business works. I think that the OSS community has pooh-poohed the importance of basic business knowledge long enough, as is obvious from the overwhelming non-success of OSS companies.

The OSS community knows quite well how business works. Their failing is that they confuse a philosophy/belief system with busi

OSDL is shrinking (again) by 33%. VA Software (The owner of Slashdot) is still bleeding. Linspire has largely flopped. Novell is only making money because MS just gave them a big cash infusion. Red Hat is the only OSS company out there making any money, from what I can tell, and even Red Hat is in trouble from the big boys (lots of other people agree... lots of short selling [thestreet.com] of their stock.

There simply are not many OSS companies out there that are really financially healthy.

OSDL is shrinking (again) by 33%. VA Software (The owner of Slashdot) is still bleeding. Linspire has largely flopped. Novell is only making money because MS just gave them a big cash infusion. Red Hat is the only OSS company out there making any money, from what I can tell, and even Red Hat is in trouble from the big boys (lots of other people agree... lots of short selling of their stock.

Trolltech. MySQL AB. Google - not an open source company per se, but uses OSS to turn on profits. So does IBM now. S

Stock prices alone are not directly related to a company's strenght & health.

No, they're directly related to the *perception* of a company's strength and health. If it's believed that the company will do better over the next $TIME, then people will buy it since everyone else will buy it. The demand will raise the price and thus give a profit.

Yes, you're right, except for the last part: profit. This very much depends on the company. The fall in the stock price may not effect a company's profit margins at all. High stock rates might be important if a company plans large investments, and needs capital to do that (and has plenty of stock to sell). In case of RH, their falling stock prices doesn't mean much. They have an established business, with exceptional customer satisfaction rates and a business model that doesn't depend on stock rates that mu

I don't understand this response. The entire point of the discussion was open source business, not open source projects in general.

Puting projects on Sourceforge does ease the burdens of bandwidth & storage, as well as reduces concerns about whether you've paid up your hosting company. The front end of Sourceforge is one big site, but they encourage the use of mirrors which are spread all over.